by Tal Bauer
He felt David’s eyes on him. David had stayed scarce until dinner, no longer haunting the halls of their compound or lingering by the bonfire.
Kris had stayed outside until his fingers went numb, knuckles stiff from the cold and fingertips turning blue. He’d wanted to soak up as much Afghanistan as he could, feel the life of the people, the land, one last time. Khan’s voice, his fractured words, detailing the deprivations and degradations his people had endured at the hands of the Taliban, across the crackle and spit of the fire, looped in his mind. How did the world stop bad people from hurting good ones?
What kind of person was he? Where did he fit on the scales?
He couldn’t answer that. He just didn’t know.
He’d spent the afternoon typing up a report on his and David’s time on the front lines. Everything had gone in, from David’s analysis of the Shura Nazar to his photos of the front and of the Taliban. Khan and his forces, not so starved and helpless as Langley had once believed. Their conversation by the fire and Khan’s quiet plea for help for the people of Mazar-e-Sharif. He’d turned it in earlier and started to pack.
George had the satellite phone on speaker, and the hisses and pops, the scratch-filled background to their tenuous secured connection, filled the empty nerve center. It sounded like they were talking to the past.
“Kris!” Clint Williams’s booming voice powered over the pops and screeching wails. “Fantastic report on the front. This is outstanding. Excellent job.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Give me your no-bullshit assessment, Kris. Tell me about the Shura Nazar. Can they fight?”
“Absolutely. They have been fighting, for years. The Taliban have pushed them back because they have more money and they can buy off rival warlords. Or buy secondhand military hardware from Russia or China. Right now, the Shura Nazar and the Taliban are at a stalemate, but the balance is tipping toward the Taliban with the rush of foreign fighters pouring into Afghanistan to offer their assistance. With no intervention, the Shura Nazar will fall next spring.”
George nodded along with Kris. “I concur with Kris’s analysis, Clint.”
“So does Langley. We’ve had our analysts here dissecting your report, along with everything else we have, and they came to the same conclusion. Gentlemen, what is the plan?”
George raised his eyebrows at Kris. “Thoughts?”
What was this? Hadn’t he been ignobly told to pack his bags and clear out, be on the next chopper to Tashkent? Kris hesitated, holding George’s stare. “The Taliban front lines are exposed. They defend against artillery and small arms fire only. Taliban positions are target-rich for an aerial bombing campaign. If the US can pound the Taliban positions and break the front lines, the Shura Nazar will be able to storm through. We just need to open the door for them.”
“We need to bring the rain, Clint. If we do that, the Shura Nazar will win the war. And it could happen fast.”
“Which means we need to be ready to capture the foreign fighters and al-Qaeda members when this whole thing blows up.” Williams sighed over the line, a long string of static. “Kris, CENTCOM agrees with your assessment that Mazar-e-Sharif is the key to northern Afghanistan. Mazar and Taloquan both. The current strategy is to liberate both of those cities, and then move on Kabul.”
“That will bolster the Shura Nazar, thin out the Taliban, and cut off their attempts to pinch the Shura Nazar when they move on Kabul.”
“And the military is tickled pink about having Uzbekistan so close to Mazar. CENTCOM is already working on propping up field bases there for resupply and combat missions,” Williams said. “So you guys need to get up to the northern front and get another GPS survey done. We need to know where the lines are outside these two cities. Where we can start dropping some bombs. And where we can insert a second CIA team outside Mazar.”
“We’ll get it done.” George scribbled notes as Williams spoke. His gaze darted to Kris. “Sir, there’s one more thing.”
Kris closed his eyes.
“Sir, Kris has made significant inroads with the Shura Nazar leadership. He’s become the liaison between the Shura Nazar and our team, and the CIA as a whole. During their negotiations, Kris learned of the Shura Nazar’s need for humanitarian resupply. There’s a famine in the valley and people are struggling. He’s promised an airlift of food. What can we do about getting that filled?”
Williams was quiet. Static filled the line. “I’ll make some calls. We’ll get the Air Force to make a drop within forty-eight hours. I’ll send you the coordinates when I have them. Kris… Well done. Really. Well done.”
“Thank you, sir.” Kris stared at George, jaw hanging. He tried to speak, but George shook his head.
“We’ll call you with an update in twelve hours, Clint.”
“Keep up the fantastic work. The president is impressed. So am I.”
The line cut.
Silence.
Afghanistan was an unnaturally quiet place. The snowcapped mountains, the icy peaks, all seemed to encase the valley in a stillness, a separation from the real world. Without the static of the phone, without the rustle and bustle of the rest of the team working in the nerve center, the quiet of Afghanistan seemed to seep into the room, fill up the corners, swim down their throats until Kris was drowning in thick, weighted silence. He could hear his own breath, his own heart beating.
“I owe you an apology,” George finally said. His voice was low, almost grinding in his throat. He flicked a pen against his palm, over and over. “You have done exceptional work here, Kris.”
“You’re not sending me back to Langley.”
“No.” George grimaced. “I want to. But I want to send you back for the wrong reasons.”
Kris waited.
“My first team lead was on counterterrorism operations in Greece. When it was bad. Greece was a nexus for all flavors of terrorism, from the rising Islamic terror to right-wing fascist neo-Nazis to extreme left anarchists. It was a violent, unstable place. And I lost someone. Someone young, and new, and brilliant. We all thought we had a handle on the risks. We all thought we knew how bad it was. But… we lost her. A neo-Nazi countersurveillance operation discovered she was working for the CIA. They lured her into a trap, and—” The pen kept slapping his palm, faster. “I promised myself,” he said carefully. “That I would never, ever sit in an officer’s house and tell their family that one of my people had been killed. On my watch. It is… the worst feeling anyone can ever feel. That you let someone else down like that.”
Something grabbed Kris’s heart and squeezed, kept squeezing. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The echoing roar of an airplane filled his soul, the too-low whine of a jet engine accelerating over Manhattan.
George finally met Kris’s stare. “You are a good officer, Kris. A very good officer.”
Kris said nothing.
“You are. Which is why you and Sergeant Haddad are headed to the northern front. I radioed Khan this evening, told him we wanted to expand operations, and that you would be there to map out the lines. He was overjoyed. You both leave tomorrow. Get it done and come back safely.” George nodded and turned away, done with the conversation. He tossed his pen onto their makeshift work table, into the clutter of papers and floppy disks and old coffee gone cold. “Keep up the good work.”
Kris escaped to the roof to watch the stars wink over the Panjshir, appear in a flood of scattered paint across the arc of the sky. To the south, faint echoes of artillery sounded, like the roar of a subway rumbling beneath the Upper East Side after midnight.
He finally headed down late, after the rest of the team had turned in. Days were long, frigid, and rough. Everyone went to bed early. He hoped David was already sleeping.
No such luck. David was awake, propped against the cold cinder block walls of their tiny room, reading by the light of his headlamp. He looked up when Kris slipped around their dingy curtain, blinding Kris.
“Sorry.” David set his headlamp on th
e floor. The light cast long shadows up the walls, claws that curled over and reached for Kris, trying to drag him down, tear him apart. “Everything okay?”
“I’m not leaving. But I guess you already knew that.”
David nodded.
“Why? Why did you say anything?”
David took his time answering, closing his book and tucking it back into his pack. Kris watched him, searching for something, anything. An opening, an answer.
“Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.”
Kris shook his head. He’d learned to give up, long ago. Give in. Sniffing, he grabbed another jacket, tried to wrap up in it.
David watched him. “We’re going to the northern front tomorrow. It’s going to be cold.”
“It already is cold.” Kris had slipped on another sweater earlier and was bundled in his thick jacket. He’d pulled on his gloves, wool and leather, and wrapped one of the black-and-white scarves Khan had gifted to him at the front around his neck and head.
“You can sleep next to me. If you want.” There was an empty space beside David, his gear shoved away, cleared out to the other side of their room. “For warmth.”
Kris had seen porn movies that started this way, probably a dozen. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, so bone-weary, his heart so shredded, he might have mustered a flirtation in response to the invite. Or at least a joke. Something to blunt the choking tension, the cloying hesitation, the stink of anxiety that permeated their room.
But he was too tired.
He dragged his mat and sleeping bag next to David’s and crawled inside, bundled in all of his clothes. David waited, hovering, propped up on his elbow as Kris settled in. As his head hit the bundled sweater he used for a pillow, Kris felt David settle in behind him, felt his body through his sleeping bag when he curled into Kris’s back.
As he fell asleep, the weight of David’s arm settled over his waist.
He was choking on smoke and bone dust, jet fuel and atomized concrete. A billion pieces of burned paper falling on him, smothering him. Massoud’s body, broken and bloody and bombed, the leader of a parade of ghosts led by Mohamed Atta, with his box cutter and his black flag and his empty, evil eyes.
This time, George was there, watching it all, along with Clint Williams. We thought you were good, they said, though their lips didn’t move. We thought you were the good guy.
He tried to run, but when he turned, David was right behind him, closer than his own shadow. Kris couldn’t get around him, couldn’t get away from him.
I thought you were worth—
He woke before David finished, gasping and clawing at his sleeping bag, at the arms holding him tight. David clung to him, burying his face in Kris’s neck, both arms around Kris like he was David’s teddy bear. He snorted and stretched, but let Kris go long enough for him to escape.
Kris stumbled out to the nerve center, to the hum of the computers, the snores of the rest of the team, the soft murmurs of the radio. Dari and Arabic floated through the static, live captures of the Taliban’s radio net. Kris picked out the words for apple and pomegranate, rice and goat. Hunger and cold. The enemy was struggling, hungry, cold, and lonely, talking into the night about what they wanted to eat.
Eat an airplane, Kris thought. Eat an airplane, dropping bombs until you’re full. Until you’re so full you explode. Until you’re one of three thousand, a name that can’t be remembered because there are too many.
He tried to breathe, tried to stop the shaking that came over him, crawling up from the bottoms of his feet, all the way up his skin. He hadn’t felt this before, hadn’t yet run face-first into the same furious, crackling rage the rest of his team nurtured. He hadn’t joined in on the calls for revenge, the bloodthirsty hunger for retribution against al-Qaeda, against the Taliban. He’d kept the blame for himself.
“Kris?” David yawned as he slipped out from behind the curtain to their room. “You okay?”
Fury roared through him. Blinding, aching fury. His bones seemed to scream, his skeleton shaking, burning to every last inch.
“Kris?” David was right there, reaching for him. His hands landed on Kris’s arms, gently.
Kris jerked free. “Stop!” he hissed. “Just stop!”
David stepped back, hands up, surrendering. His eyes glistened, pools of silver in the flash of the radio lights. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t help me! You shouldn’t care about me! You shouldn’t do any of this!” Kris waved back to their room, to David, trying to wrap everything David had done, all that he was, up as one. “I am not worth anything!”
“What?”
“I am not worth one moment of what you’ve given me! Not a single moment! Your care, your concern, your coffee? Stop wasting your time on me!”
“Kris…” David slowly inched forward, his voice a whisper. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because—” His heart screamed, the same pitch, the same tone as the planes that had flown over Manhattan, that had slammed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania. Ash coated his throat, and in his hands, he felt the dust of thousands upon thousands of bones sift through his fingers. “Because I am responsible for nine-eleven!”
David froze. His eyes narrowed. “What?”
“My section, my unit! We were tracking Khalid al-Mihdhar and Marwan al-Shehhi. We had them on our radar. The FBI, earlier this year, they asked for what we had on them! We refused to share the intel. We knew they were al-Qaeda. We knew they were connected to the embassy bombings in Africa. We were tracing their connections, their meet-ups with other al-Qaeda operatives. Money that was exchanged. But we wouldn’t share what we had! The higher-ups, they thought the FBI would fuck it up! We wanted to see how much higher we could go through the chain. Didn’t want to risk blowing our intelligence if the FBI just arrested them! But no one knew, no one fucking knew, when they needed to know! To stop what happened!”
“Kris, what—”
“Their names were on my desk! Mine! If I had just passed those names along, if the FBI would have alerted someone, anyone, about those two… American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 175 wouldn’t have slammed into the Pentagon and the South Tower!”
“You don’t know that. You can’t say that—” David sputtered, shaking his head.
“They would have been detained when they entered the US! Questioned. They wouldn’t have been on those flights. Maybe al-Qaeda would have had to call the entire operation off! Maybe they would have had to cancel it! If they’d had to cancel it, then Ahmad Shah Massoud would still be alive. Bin Laden wouldn’t have had to murder him! Everything, all of this! It’s my fault! Because I didn’t—”
His voice cracked, and Kris collapsed, the bones in his body no longer able to hold him up, keep him standing under the weight of three thousand dead souls, under the years of unlived lives, under the shame that grated his heart to slivers, to dust, to ash. He fell to his knees, curled over, and pressed his forehead to the dirty floor, to the threadbare carpet covering the cold concrete.
He couldn’t breathe. He gasped, his throat closing, choking off like he was being strangled. Tears flowed, cascading down his cheeks, falling from his chin into pools beneath his face. Snot and spit dribbled from his nose, his mouth. He was disgusting. A disgusting human being.
A hand rested on his back, gentle, warm. Another landed on his head, fingers sliding through his hair. The hand guided him up, cradled his head until he was sitting, staring into David’s stern face.
Kris waited for David to snap his neck, to rip him in half. To end everything.
“It was not your fault,” David breathed. His voice, a whisper, shook. His eyes burned, slamming into Kris like brands. “It was not your fault. You did not hijack those planes. You did not fly them into the Towers, into the Pentagon. You did not do this.”
“I let it happen…”
David gripped his skull,
pulled Kris closer. His hands shook, his arms, and Kris trembled with him. Kris’s teeth started to chatter. “Do not take on this blame. You are not them. You are not a murderer. You are not part of their hate. You are not to blame.”
“I am…”
“You are not the beginning of this, Kris. You are not where all of this, all of the hatred, all of the fighting, comes from. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“All I can see, when I close my eyes,” Kris gasped, “are the Twin Towers. The planes. And their faces. Looking up at me from my desk.” He squeezed his eyes closed. Tears spilled from his eyes. “How can you even look at me?”
“Because I see what you don’t. I see the smartest man I’ve ever met. A man dedicated to the fight. To stopping the Taliban, to capturing Bin Laden. I see a man focused on doing the right thing. On being the best he can be. I see a hero, Kris.”
“No…” A sob built in his chest, and he tried to pull free of David’s hold. “No, I’m not.”
“I see a man who came to Afghanistan, and despite everyone’s judgments, everyone’s prejudices, did his job perfectly. You built an alliance with General Khan. You did that. You built that. The people of Afghanistan will have hope, and a future, once we get rid of the Taliban. And we will, because of what you’ve built with Khan. How is that not heroic?”
Kris shook.
“I see a man I care about,” David whispered. “Someone I—” His lips clamped shut. His thumbs stroked over Kris’s cheekbones, wiping away tears. “I see you. I see someone exceptional.”
He pulled Kris in, slowly wrapping his arms around Kris until they were one, huddled on the floor and wrapped around each other, arms and chests pressed so tightly together there was no space between them. Kris trembled, shaking until he thought his body would just fall to pieces. David held him, a fierce hold that surrounded Kris, enveloped him completely, and held him up. Held his bones and his soul in place.
He didn’t know how long they stayed there. It felt like an eternity, listening to Arabic whisper over the radio and Ryan and George snoring in counterpoint. Finally, David pulled him up, guided him back to their room. He unzipped his own sleeping bag and laid Kris inside, deep in the warm folds that smelled like David, that radiated his presence.